The rebels, proclaiming the prince as king, intrigued with Henry VII.; James was driven across the Forth, and was supported in the north by his uncle, Atholl, and by Huntly, Crawford, and Lord Lindsay of the Byres, Errol, Glamis, Forbes, and Tullibardine, and the chivalry of Angus and Strathtay.  Attempts at pacification failed; Stirling Castle was betrayed to the rebels, and James’s host, swollen by the loyal burgesses of the towns, met the Border spears of Home and Hepburn, the Galloway men, and the levies of Angus at Sauchie Burn, near Bannockburn.

In some way not understood, James, riding without a single knight or squire, fell from his horse, which had apparently run away with him, at Beaton’s Mill, and was slain in bed, it was rumoured, by a priest, feigned or false, who heard his confession.  The obscurity of his reign hangs darkest over his death, and the virulent Buchanan slandered him in his grave.  Under his reign, Henryson, the greatest of the Chaucerian school in Scotland, produced his admirable poems.  Many other poets whose works are lost were flourishing; and The Wallace, that elaborate plagiarism from Barbour’s ‘The Brus,’ was composed, and attributed to Blind Harry, a paid minstrel about the Court. {71}

CHAPTER XIV.  JAMES IV.

The new king, with Angus for his Governor, Argyll for his Chancellor, and with the Kers and Hepburns in office, was crowned at Scone about June 25, 1488.  He was nearly seventeen, no child, but energetic in business as in pleasure, though lifelong remorse for his rebellion gnawed at his heart.  He promptly put down a rebellion of the late king’s friends and of the late king’s foe, Lennox, then strong in the possession of Dumbarton Castle, which, as it commands the sea-entrance by Clyde, is of great importance in the reign of Mary and James VI.  James III. must have paid attention to the navy, which, under Sir Andrew Wood, already faced English pirates triumphantly.  James IV. spent much money on his fleet, buying timber from France, for he was determined to make Scotland a power of weight in Europe.  But at the pinch his navy vanished like a mist.

Spanish envoys and envoys from the Duchess of Burgundy visited James in 1488-1489; he was in close relations with France and Denmark, and caused anxieties to the first Tudor king, Henry VII., who kept up the Douglas alliance with Angus, and bought over Scottish politicians.  While James, as his account-books show, was playing cards with Angus, that traitor was also negotiating the sale of Hermitage Castle, the main hold of the Middle Border, to England.  He was detected, and the castle was intrusted to a Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell; it was still held by Queen Mary’s Bothwell in 1567.  The Hepburns rose to the earldom of Bothwell on the death of Ramsay, a favourite of James III., who (1491) had arranged to kidnap James IV. with his brother, and hand them over to Henry VII., for 277 pounds, 13s. 4d.!  Nothing came of this, and a truce with England was arranged in 1491.  Through four reigns, till James VI. came to the English throne, the Tudor policy was to buy Scottish traitors, and attempt to secure the person of the Scottish monarch.